Search

The Czech Republic ranks among the countries with a strong tradition of home food self-provisioning. In this article, we focused our attention specifically to the traditional and frequently neglected phenomenon of rural self-provisioning while newly introducing a data-based analysis of the phenomenon in two areas, i.e., suburbs and peripheries of the South Moravian region. Unlike the research carried out in the CR or EU to date, our survey aims exclusively at the analysis of households with access to land, which allow a more detailed scrutiny of growing a wide range of commodities, the attitudes to it and its perspectives. The results of the field study carried out in 178 rural households in two types of South Moravian regions (suburban and peripheral) from 2017 show the regional differences in food self-provisioning. They also contribute to a better understanding of a phenomenon whose variability within a rural territory is quite known a little. Even though the suburban and peripheral regions have very comparable natural conditions and opportunities of growing crops (a similar type of estate, nearly the same size of the gardens surveyed), we can observe rather remarkable differences, especially in the extent of the areas being farmed and in the scale of breeding domesticated animals (work demanding activities). Compared to that, only negligible differences were found in growing commodities demanding less work (fruit and tomato growing). The identified differences in attitudes to self-provisioning in the observed regions (depending on the varied types of population in the regions) allow for analysing the perspectives of particular self-provisioning activities both in South Moravia and the CR on the whole.

This paper presents a sociological analysis of the image of a “good village”, as portrayed in the annual Czech competition Village of the Year. It focuses on the positive representations attached to the rural in the political and expert discourse. The analysis is rooted in cultural rural sociology and in its study of rural idyll. It is argued that a specific kind of rural idyll is produced in the competition. This idyll is analysed using the photographs submitted to the competition by the villages themselves. A combination of visual methods is employed to uncover the positive values attached to the images. The results show that activity and social life play a key role in the image of a “good village” thus produced. On the other hand, there are virtually no references to agriculture.

Ensuring the generation renewal in the agriculture is crucial. There are policy incentives to attract young people, but the motivation to enter the sector depend on many factors and there are also barriers. The aim of the paper is to assess the motivation and barriers of the young farmers, newcomers to the agrarian sector in the Czech Republic and to draft the conclusions for policy a nd incentives creation. Based on answers of 510 young farmers, the main motive to enter was the wish to continue with farming on the farm of the parents or other relatives and to work in nature and with animals. The hardest was to purchase the agricultural land, administrative burden and ensuring the finances for the development and for start-up. Hence, to facilitate the start-up it is useful to support the land purchase and provide investment subsidies. The research was financed from internal research project 1113/2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]